vampires.

[gipsy_danger]

“Only a vampire can love you forever."




Chuck Hansen isn't supposed to be alive.

Technically, he is, but it's only thanks to the zoo of machines keeping him that way.

No one is quite sure how it happened, at the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of that blast, but it did. There might have been another way, sure, but not in the heat of the moment. And you never, ever leave your co-pilot.

And so they're assumed dead.

And it's a god damn miracle when Chuck's evac pod pops up on the surface, twisted and burnt, malfunctioning, because Stacker's never does. There's not a body to bury, there's nothing. But Chuck is collected as quickly as possible and- oh god- he's still alive.

Twisted and burnt just like his pod, half a man, barely even recognizable if not for the drive suit melted into what little skin is left. But he's alive.

His father nearly dies, himself from the guilt and refuses to leave the hospital room, takes to obsessing over the machines and doing anything he can. He doesn't eat. He doesn't sleep, wrapped in a sterile plastic suit to keep from bringing infection. He knows there's not much hope, Chuck hasn't woken up and if he did the pain would put him right out again. He looks more like a Halloween prop than he does a man and Herc can't take it.

Neither can anyone else, for that matter. The Shatterdome operates under a quiet hush. Mako deals with Herc's responsibilities as Marshal even though she's mourning, herself. Raleigh tries to help but finds himself drawn to hovering outside Chuck's room. For a full seven days he lingers, watching the machines breathe and pump his heart and filter his blood.

Raleigh has been alive for a long time. He's seen a great rise in humankind, leaps and bounds in it's technology, it's community, it's tolerance. What he finds the most interesting is love. The beauty of love and life and just how far humans will go to preserve it. He watches a father pray over his dying son, desperate for help and knowing nothing will come. There are no miracles, here. No gods. There are monsters, otherworldly beings, and it seems unfair that they, as people, as a world community can band together to fight this evil, but it can't save the life of the hero who saved it.

Please, He can hear the elder Hansen plead, hands clasped, eyes raw and wet, shoulders trembling so softly a normal glance would miss it entirely. Please, don't die.

And Hercules feels bad for being so selfish. He doesn't want his son in pain, he doesn't want him to wake up and see what he's become, tied into a spider's web of technology, but he doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to be the man that sent his son to die alone.

On the seventh day things take a turn for the worse. Steady decline through the day and into the evening. It's amazing he's made it this far, really, but Chuck isn't going to last much longer. And this is when Raleigh steps in.

He enters the room, not bothering with a sterile suit, there's no need, Chuck is about to die. Hercules looks up with surprise and then anger at the lack of thought. He's about to say something but Raleigh speaks first.

"I can save him."

"What?" Shock. And then he recoils. Slow. Tortured. This is a shitty time for jokes, but, since when was Becket a joker?

"I can save him. I can save your son's life." He takes a step closer, deadly serious, and moves to draw the blinds closed over the observation window before settling on the other side of Chuck's bed.

"But he won't be the same. He won't be human. But he'll be alive."

"How?"

And then Raleigh has to tell him. Has to admit to what he is, his own story, that yes, monsters are real and kaiju aren't the only ones. But his kind aren't from another world. His kind are made of men and second chances and a certain darkness born from centuries and centuries of repentance. And Herc listens, anger slowly fading into disbelief, shock, and then...maybe...just maybe the flicker of hope. They talk for a long time. Longer than they should given Chuck's condition.

"Will he feel pain?"

"No."

"Will he be impaired?"

"No. He'll be stronger than ever."

"How long have you-"

"A long time."

"Since before K-Day?"

"Yes."

And despite all the folklore, the stories and myths and horror culture that has grown around it, Herc has served with this man, this Ranger, for many years. They've had each other's back. He's a good man. Not at all the shadow dwelling, blood sucking, black and white movie spectacle you'd expect.

And he's offering to save his son's life.

And so he agrees and Raleigh nods, coming in close to Chuck's body, helpless as it is on the bed. He inspects his fallen comrade for a moment and stops, looking over his shoulder.

"You don't have to see this.."

"I want to."

"Turn off the machines and stop anyone from coming in." An order the elder Hansen obeys. He can't help but be scared but he does what he's told and steadies himself, fists curled, jaw set. Raleigh nods and turns back.

Bares his teeth-

-and bites.

And he can feel the pain of the blast in his bones. The blood is warm and tastes like dialysis but it's still good, and from it he draws the story of Chuck's life. His fears, his ambitions, his wants and needs and dreams. He drinks, and drinks, hunched over Chuck as though they were in a long embrace.

Finally, finally Raleigh pulls back and removes the ventilator from Chuck's mouth. He doesn't need it anymore.

He can hear Herc's noise of distress behind him, smell his fear, but the job is only half way done. And he bites his own wrist, deep, sharp fangs ripping through buried veins and pours himself into Chuck's mouth, other hand soothing his throat to swallow. And from himself he gives life, and the curse he was saved with many many years ago.

And when it's done, the wound heals by itself. And Raleigh turns to see the horror in Herc's face.

"Tell the nurses he's dead. Say you're bringing him to the morgue yourself. I'll help you."

The man snaps back into reality and nods, ripping the door open to find a nurse. Raleigh turns the machines back on and, like a funeral march, they all begin to scream.

Chuck Hansen isn't supposed to be alive.

Technically he's not, but he will live on.

And it will be days before he revives, body slowly reforming itself, leaving behind only the faintest silvery scars over his back and up the right side of his neck. But he's a full man, a healed man, and as his body changes Raleigh and Herc have moved him into a temporary studio apartment just outside the Shatterdome. The war is over the the 'Dome is still running. It's not safe to have him there and anyway, they have to arrange Chuck's funeral alongside Pentecost's. A formal memorial. A tribute to all the fallen pilots.

The morgue receives a body not quite Chuck's but not exactly identifiable. It's incinerated and placed inside a coffin which they bury. Raleigh and Herc are Pallbearers, somber and quiet in their dress blues.

And all the while Chuck is healing. It's slow, Raleigh feeds him as much as he's able, draining himself to dangerous ends to provide as much as he can. Herc is there as much as he can be without his absence being noticed, terrified, worried, and as much as Raleigh doesn't want him there, doesn't want him to see his son's body react, watch him drink his blood and expel all it's earthly fluids and slowly piece itself back together, he gets it. And he's doing this as a gift, in part, so he allows it.

But he can't always be there. He has a program to run. A Shatterdome to decommission.


It's early evening on the fourteenth day when consciousness comes creeping back to Chuck Hansen's body.

Comments

[suicidemission]

"The release is jammed--! We can't deliver the payload, Sir! We're still online, but the hull is compromised, half our systems are offline, Sir--" Chuck's shouting over Striker's alarms, smacking at the panel and flipping switches in order to shut them off, turn the goddamn things down so that he can hear himself (and Stacker) fucking think.

The weapons systems are jammed, they can't drop the bomb, and Chuck's got a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach because he knows, he fucking knows whats coming and it's the only thing to do.

And so he asks, he asks so LOCCENT can hear, so his father can hear, he asks the Marshal--

"What can we do, Sir?"

“We can clear a path,” Stacker says, “For the lady.”

Chuck can only agree. What else is there to do? Striker's dead in the water - literally - and there's no good way out of the situation. Using Striker's built in escape pods is out of the question, and Chuck won't leave Stacker down here.

The only option is detonating that payload and making way for Gipsy Danger to finish the mission, and his stomach feels sour as he meets Stacker's eyes, the feeling in his gut starting to churn, bile rising up in his throat.

Chuck doesn't need to be in the Drift to know what the Marshal is thinking, what's running through his head. Duty calls and honestly, this is how Chuck expected it to end. He'd expected to go out in a blaze of glory, of burning bright light and fire, but what he hadn't anticipated was not experiencing that with his father.

Instead of familiarity, of Herc's warmth and heat that reminded him of Sydney, it's coldness - the barren wasteland of Stacker Pentecost's empty drift.

Chuck nods, reaches to touch the switch, and prepares to die alone. Blackness comes and overtakes him, and he knows nothing else.

* * *

How time passes can be a funny thing; years can go by in a blink yet minutes can feel like hours under the right circumstances.

For a little while, Chuck is only vaguely aware of his surroundings, and what was going on around him. Immense pain - so much of it that it kept him in a perpetual state of unconsciousness - was his only companion and it grew to be too much, far, far too much and eventually, Chuck's body had to give up.

Or at least, it tried to.

Instead of death, more darkness came. Sleep, or something like it, overtook him completely and he knew nothing, felt nothing and saw nothing for an indeterminate amount of time.

When Chuck stirs on his own for the first time in two weeks, he has no idea how long it has been since he drew a breath on his own. He doesn't know where he is, how long he's been here, or why he's even alive.

He shouldn't be. He distinctly remembered going to detonate the payload but beyond that--

Nothing.

He doesn't know what happened, and that terrifies him.

Chuck can't speak, not right away; he's unused to using his limbs and his vocal chords so instead of articulated words, the only thing that comes out is a garbled croak.

[righthemisphere]

All things considered, Chuck has been down and out for just over a month. Half of that has been through supernatural means but his body has only just gotten to a stage where it can begin to function.

The apartment is quiet, dim. There's light from a reading lamp coming from somewhere behind Chuck and the sound of a page turning.

Raleigh looks up with surprise the moment he stirs, immediately setting his book down and crossing the room.

"Shh.." It's quiet, soothing. A strong hand gently slides under Chuck's head for support and something is held to his lips. Warm, fragrant, absolutely irresistible.

"Here, drink this. As much as you can."

A male voice, familiar if Chuck is lucid enough to place it.

[suicidemission]

Chuck vaguely registers the voice as belonging to Raleigh Becket, and it cues a lot of confusion and questions, but he can’t quite bring himself to ask them.

Especially not when something that good is brought to his lips and he’s so, so thirsty that the thirst overtakes everything else and he drinks greedily, pulling more into his mouth before he’s even finished swallowing the previous gulp.

It’s only when it’s pulled away is Chuck able to function enough to speak, to pull his eyes open and actually focus on the man in the room with him.

Why the hell is Raleigh here?

Where is he?

…How is he alive?

He looks at Raleigh, confusion and anger etched into his features, and he allows himself a cursory look around – unfamiliar apartment, unfamiliar surroundings. He has a million questions, but all that comes out it—

“What the fuck?”

[righthemisphere]

Of course it does.

Raleigh smirks and pulls his sweater sleeve back down over his right arm, but the amusement is gone in a flash, replaced with a resigned worry. Slightly pale. Feeding a newborn takes a lot out of you, especially when you're reluctant to go hunting. When you're dependent on sustenance coming to you.

He doesn't answer Chuck's question.

He'll be doing a lot of answering soon enough.

"How are you feeling?"

[suicidemission]

Chuck only lets the question go because even he realizes there's probably no good way to answer that. 'What the fuck' isn't exactly a door opener, though Chuck still isn't thinking very clearly.

"Like I got hit by a fucking truck."

He grimaces, and pushes himself up, trying to sit up properly while rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck.

"The fuck happened? Where am I?"

[righthemisphere]

"An apartment in Hong Kong, just outside the Shatterdome."

Straight and to the point.

The second part he has to consider more because how do you answer that? He's given it a lot of thought and simply decides to go with;

"You survived."

[suicidemission]

He sits up completely and rubs the back of his neck with his palm, expression a little pained and a lot confused. Chuck's not a stupid man; he's intelligent, knows the odds of his survival were literally zero and knows that even if he was sent on up, the blast would've shredded his pod and he wouldn't have lived anyway.

He doesn't get it. None of this makes any sense.

Chuck looks Raleigh straight in the eye and drops his hands.

"Am I dead?"

[righthemisphere]

"For a little while, yeah."

And it's true, but it can mean a lot of things. Raleigh intends on keeping it vague at first. Until he can gauge just how explosive this is going to be.

"But you're awake, and sitting up and coherent. That's great. I wasn't sure you'd recover so quickly."

And it's the truth.

"You should get some rest."

[suicidemission]

Chuck feels bone weary with that statement for some reason - he doesn't know why, but it hits a nerve and he leans back on his (is it his? he still has so many unanswered questions that he doesn't know how to articulate) bed, exhaling slowly.

"How -- long has it been? How long was I out?"

[suicidemission]

Chuck makes his announcement and he can see Raleigh stiffen, the line of muscle tense all the way from his neck down to the bottom of his spine. Chuck knows that there’s some kind of bond between them, some kind of strange Drift-like connection that transcends the norm, though it only seems to manifest itself when teeth pierce skin, a circle completed.

Chuck doesn’t want to feel that rage again, that hate that shot his way in the last throes of passion; he doesn’t want to hurt, doesn’t want to feel any more anguish than he already does.

So when Raleigh says “Okay,” Chuck takes it to mean “I will start training you immediately”, and that’s exactly what happens.

He asks to go hunting the next night, says he wants to learn to feed himself because he can’t be dependent on Raleigh forever (literally) and it’s true, though there’s undertones of what Chuck’s really saying in his voice, that he’s afraid of that connection, that bond, that intense bloodlust he’d fallen prey to the previous day.

[righthemisphere]

And Raleigh understands the subtext because, all things considered, he's a little scared as well. He's never been on this side of it and having that control is terrifying. The surge of emotion behind it, the pull and ebb, the sheer amount of love he finds himself trying to wrangle is overwhelming.

And he knows part of it is because of this bond.

And part of it is sheer intoxication from watching Chuck.

And part of it is yearning for companionship.

The next night he brings Chuck to a bar in the seedy side life of central Hong Kong.

"You don't have to kill to live. You never have to kill." He says and approaches a black door with no markings. He pulls a penlight from his pocket and shines it across the black lacquer illuminating a bold V.

"Vampire friendly. There are clubs...meeting places all around the world in every major city. Safe havens. It's underground but it's a network." He knocks three times.

"I haven't really...been social the last couple years." He hates going to these places. The PPDC aren't the only source of pity and scrutiny in his life. In this world he's one of Aidan's sons. The Doctor's boy. The soldier who loves humans and fights for reasons not everyone understands. Reasons that got his sire killed. His brother, too.

"I'm not exactly popular. Not everyone loves their humanity. Not everyone has tried to keep it."

An old, gentle faced woman answers the door . She looks him over and then over Chuck before asking something that sounds mildly skeptical. Raleigh laughs and threads his arm around Chuck's waist, answering with a smile.

She lets them in and leads them through what looks just like a family home. Traditional and dated, she ushers them through the living room and into the kitchen to another unmarked door past a few people who look incredibly out of place - sitting around the kitchen table playing high stakes poker.

Raleigh shoots his fledgling a look that says 'Welcome to the Network' and ushers him down.

Loud music is thumping up from behind the door and when the old woman opens it they meet a long concrete stairwell that leads to a club. A den of sin with comfortable couches and free flowing liquor, drugs, sex, beautiful women, beautiful men, and blood. And it's given freely, encouraged.

[suicidemission]

Chuck can maybe see why not everyone loved their humanity, wanted to keep it. He's stronger, that much he can tell already even with as limited experience he has. His body is physically better than it was when he was just a man, and with every roll of his shoulders and flex of his muscles he can feel that, feel the power that's now settled in.

Raleigh's arm settles around his waist and it's both a struggle not to shove him away and lean in. The two desires conflict and smash into one another and he ends up allowing it but not encouraging it, expression tight and guarded as they're led further down and closer towards the music that beckons.

The moment they walk in Chuck makes the decision that he's of the same mind as Raleigh - he's edgy, this isn't his scene, it never has been. Chuck didn't go out to clubs, didn't indulge in sex or alcohol or drugs. He's instantly uncomfortable, instantly stiff and unyielding and wary and now he does press in closer against Raleigh's side, hazel eyes sharp in the dim lighting. Everything is enhanced now; the music is too loud, the laughter too high pitched, whispered voices audible over thrumming, heart pounding bass.

He hates it, but he also sees the allure, and how a place like this could be necessary.

"Now what," he mutters quietly, almost inaudible.

[righthemisphere]

"Now you pick someone." Raleigh answers and nods in the direction of a couch full of girls. They're all watching them, half of them looking high as shit.

"You have to be careful here. Anything in their blood gets in yours. If they're high, you get high, too."

Another nod towards a mirror on a near by table sporting piles of a suspicious white powder. Cocaine, or MDMA maybe.

A few heads turn when they enter, a few judgmental glances between a man silver haired man in round tinted glasses and a red flamboyant suit and his bald but striking Chinese companion. The underground is the underground. Many trades collide.

"Feng and her human pet Hannibal Chau." Raleigh supplies. "He runs the kaiju black market trade. They're peddlers and I don't trust anything about them."

They exchange nods anyway, a quiet acknowledgment of what's transpired. Chuck is known to them now, under the protection of Raleigh Becket. Fine, they have no business with them right now. No reason to approach.

There are a few others but no one Raleigh knows. Two gorgeous women, amazon tall with dark skin and dramatic dreadlocks double teaming a pale man in the corner. One rides his cock while he fingers the other, they're drinking from either side of his neck.

An old Chinese man is entertained by three or four girls, loving little nips exchanged between them.

A very young girl with long black hair dressed in incredibly expensive clothes being doted on by two grown men. The girl is the vampire, the men her guardian pets. She's probably insane from arrested development.

Raleigh absolutely hates being here.

"Her.." He finally says and nods to a pretty blonde sitting at the bar, watching them with a smile as she tongues the straw in her cocktail. "You can tell from her eyes she's clean."

Raleigh nods her over and she gets up and approaches. He smiles and flirts, she says her name is Amber. She asks them if they're hungry.

It's that easy.

[suicidemission]

The blonde is pretty, he likes blond hair, always has – long on girls, messy on guys. Chuck’s never had a particular sexual preference before, he’d grown up military and he’d been barked at, bitched at, and beaten up by men and women alike and to him, gender is fluid and interchangeable. His preferences reflect that, though while in the PPDC program he’d had little opportunity to explore his wants and desires.

He nods at her while Raleigh flirts, though he’s mostly hunched over, hating every second of this and doing his best not to smell everything that’s happening in the room. Blood, bodily fluids, alcohol, smoke, drugs – it’s all there and hanging heavy in the air, mixed scents making his stomach turn over on itself and it takes conscious effort to keep himself stable as well as a firm hand on the barstool to keep from simply bolting and getting the hell out of there.

This is disgusting. It’s perverse and open and Chuck couldn’t feel more out of place.

He’s mostly zoned out during the exchange, letting his mind take him somewhere else that isn’t here; bottom of the ocean, blackness, death – fire hot pain shooting through limbs, birthday cake, chuck’s nine, the Avengers is coming out, it’s 2012--

The question has his attention snapping back into focus and he looks over, looks between Raleigh and the girl and feels a surge of jealousy slowly start twisting through him, expression blackening, eyes flashing.

[righthemisphere]

Raleigh smiles to her and answers yes. That tonight is special. She's special.

"C'mon." To a quiet corner of the room away from everyone else. There are drapes in the back that lead to little love nests. More private. More sanitary. This is personal to them, he doesn't want to be on display. He's not there to initiate his fledgling into the underworld. Chuck isn't a Debutante. This isn't a performance.

Raleigh picks a nest made of plush cushions on the floor. It's soft and intimate. He ushers Amber in and then Chuck, hiding him back for just a moment to catch his eye.

"Do you want this? We can leave."

[suicidemission]

Of course he doesn't want this. Of course he wants to leave. He sees the necessity of it though, and he gives Raleigh a look that pretty clearly conveys what he thinks of that question and shoulders past him into the little 'nest'.

He can look at this like it's another challenge. Another way to progress. It doesn't have to be personal, and it's not special.

It's a necessity only.

He drops onto the cushions next to her and kicks his shoes off, giving her a lazy smirk, falling back into character for the performance.

"Ever been with two at once, love?"

The Aussie drawl is thick, his tone full of honey, eyes intense.

[righthemisphere]

Fine, point taken. He doesn't want to force Chuck into something, that's his point, here. Amber settles down in the middle, paying particular attention to Chuck. She's foreign, Canadian or maybe American. Raleigh settles down on her other side.

She shakes her head no.

"You look familiar.."

"He's got one of those faces." Raleigh interjects, running a hand over her shoulder but looking directly at Chuck.

NEW THING

[suicidemission]

A light so bright that Chuck has to close his eyes engulfs both himself and Stacker Pentecost, and then comes the searing pain, the resounding boom of Striker Eureka’s detonation. It echoes in his brain and rattles him to the very core but it’s fast, fleeting – almost imperceptible and then there’s nothing but blackness.

Months pass, but time is strange when you’re dead. It’s a twisted thing, some moments are fleeting and some so long and drawn out that Chuck just wished it would all end already. He ghosts around, drifting here and there – mostly unaware of himself and what is going on around him. He doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know what’s happening, only that on some level he exists and that he is dead.

He is cold; skin and muscle and bone feel like razor sharp pieces of ice, like he’s been carved from a glacier and placed upon the earth.

He doesn’t breath, he doesn’t eat.

He exists.

Scent draws him, pulls him from a sheer existential state and when he looks down he’s whole, solid – corporeal, and in a battered, rusty drivesuit, a fist knocking on a door.

[righthemisphere]

Closure is a funny thing. The end and a new beginning all at the same time. Truth be told, Raleigh didn't ever think he'd see the end of the war. He thought he'd die in Gipsy and that would be that.

But that's not what happened.

And you know what? He's glad. He has a future now, he has friends in Mako and Tendo and Herc, a few people he's friendly with from Gipsy's crew. Anf adter all the press tours and hand shaking and medals of honor he's finally getting some quiet.

And that's not such a bad thing. Mako is in Japan mourning Pentecost. He misses her but he doesn't mind. He knows she needs space to process, but it leaves the apartment they share empty. Uncomfortable but he figures he also needs some space.

So when the door gets knocked on and he's not expecting anyone, it's a surprise.

When he opens it, he's sure he's hallucinating. Every muscle in Raleigh's body freezes, terror immediately jumping up into his throat. He can't think, he can't speak. Because standing right in front of him? The ghost of Chuck Fucking Hanson.

[suicidemission]

Chuck’s really unaware of how he got here – images are blurry, memories fleeting and they disappear the moment he tries to reach out and touch them, desperate for some kind of answer, some sort of explanation.

None comes.

It’s just senses now; sight far too vivid, scent too strong, touch too intense. His hearing is exceptional and taste—

Mottled. Food doesn’t taste right and Raleigh smells like fucking perfection and it’s all Chuck can do to keep himself upright when the door is opened and not utterly throwing himself at Becket and affixing his mouth to his the pale skin of his neck.

He shakes himself, flexes his fingers into fists and stands up straight, knowing damn well what he looks like, what this looks like.

“Raaahleigh,” he drawls, leaning a hand on the doorframe. “Aren’t ya gonna let me in?”

[righthemisphere]

"Hhh-" Just a breath. One he didn't realize he's been holding. And when it felt like everything had paused, suddenly time had come snapping back into place and crashing down on top of him.

He immediately moves to the side, staring so hard his eyes might pop out.

Raleigh gapes, trying to form actual words.

"Chuck- How..?! How?!"

[suicidemission]

Chuck laughs and it sounds brittle, like aged paper crackling in a fist. He shoulders his way inside and past the gaping Raleigh, eager to get out of sight.

"Fuck if I know, mate."

He's hungry.

Raleigh smells good.

[righthemisphere]

He moves and closes the door, still gawking.

"This isn't happening..How is this happening. Chuck-" Like it's painful to say his name.

"You're not- You're dead. I saw-"

[suicidemission]

"Yeah, 'n I felt it. Like, fucking fire burning my flesh off." His eyes flash, a hauntedl ook crossing his face before he shrugs.

"Now I'm here. Funny how that works, isn't it?"

[righthemisphere]

"Funny isn't the word I'd use.."

He can't compute but cross the the distance (he'd someone backed up against the door and pressed himself into it...as though that would explain anything) and tentatively puts a hand on Chuck's armored shoulder.

And he's real.

He presses a little harder, then suddenly it's almost like he's frisking the other ranger. Face, neck, chest. He's real. He's touching him and he's real.

"I can't believe it..!"